I ducked my head and threw him a sideways poor-little-me glance, up under the lashes. “The coma totally messed up my memory. So you’ll have to tell me where we were, and stuff?”
Ned stared at me. That impassive face, utterly expressionless, giving away nothing: for the first time I saw a resemblance to Daniel, even if it was Daniel after a frontal lobotomy. “We were on a hundred,” he said, after a moment. “Cash.”
A hundred quid for some family heirloom, a hundred grand for a share of the house? I didn’t have to be sure what we were talking about to know he was lying. “Um, I don’t think so,” I told him, giving him a flirty smirk to soften the blow of being outsmarted by a girl. “The coma messed up my memory, not my brain.”
Ned laughed, completely unembarrassed, stuffing his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels. “Well, hey, a guy’s gotta try, right?”
I kept the smirk, since he seemed to like it. “Keep trying.”
“OK,” Ned said, sobering up and putting on his business face. “Seriously. So I said one eighty, right? And you told me I’d have to do better than that, which you’re totally breaking my bollocks here but fair enough, and to get back to you. So I left you a note saying we can talk about two hundred K, right, but then you…” An uncomfortable shrug. “You know.”
Two hundred K. For a second all I felt was the pure white high of triumph, the one every detective knows, when the cards turn over and you see that every bet you placed was pinpoint perfect, that flying blind you found your way straight home. Then I realized.
I had assumed Ned was the one holding things up, sorting out paperwork or trying to raise cash. Lexie had never needed serious money to run before. She had reached North Carolina with the deposit for a fleabag apartment and left it with what she got for her beaten-up car; all she had ever asked for was an open road and a few hours’ head start. This time, she had been negotiating six-figure deals with Ned. Not just because she could; with the baby growing and Abby’s sharp eyes in the background and an offer that size on the table, why hang around for weeks over a few grand either way? She would have signed on the dotted line, demanded small bills and been gone, unless she needed every penny she could get.
The more I had learned about Lexie, the more I had taken it for granted that she was planning on having an abortion, as soon as she got to wherever she was going. Abby-and Abby had known her, as well as anyone could-thought the same, after all. But an abortion only costs a few hundred quid. Lexie could have saved that much from her job by this time, nicked it out of the kitty one night, got a bank loan she would never repay; no need to mess around with Ned at all.
Raising a child costs a whole lot more. The princess of No Man’s Land, the queen of a thousand castles between worlds, had crossed over. She had been about to open her hands and take hold of the biggest commitment of all. The wall felt like it was turning to water underneath me.
I must have been staring like I’d seen a ghost. “Seriously,” Ned said, a little miffed, misreading the look. “I’m not messing you around. Two hundred Gs is my absolute best offer. I mean, I’m taking a major risk here. After we’re sorted, I’ve still got to convince at least two of your mates. I’ll get there in the end, obviously, once I’ve got the leverage, but that could take months and a shitload of hassle.”
I pressed my free hand down on the wall, hard, feeling the rough stone dig into my palm, till my head cleared. “You think?”
Those pale eyes widened. “Oh, God, yah. I don’t know what the fuck their damage is. I know they’re your friends and Daniel’s my cousin and shit, but, like, are they thick? Just the thought of doing something with that house had them squealing like a bunch of nuns at a flasher.”
I shrugged. “They like the place.”
“Why? I mean, it’s a total dive, it doesn’t even have heating, and they act like it’s some kind of palace. Do they not realize what they could get out of it, if they just got a grip? That house has potential.”
Executive apartments on extensive grounds with potential for further development… For a second I despised Lexie and me both, for schmoozing this little skid mark for our own ends. “I’m the smart one,” I said. “When you get the place, what are you going to do with all that potential?”
Ned gave me a baffled stare; presumably he and Lexie had already talked about this. I gave him back a blank look, which seemed to make him feel at home. “Depends on planning permission, yah? I mean, ideally, I’ll go for a golf club or a spa hotel, something like that. That’s where the serious long-term profit is, specially if I can get a helipad put in. Otherwise, we’re talking major luxury apartments.”
